Search results for "Engineers"
showing 10 items of 33 documents
Ingegneri militari nella Sicilia degli Asburgo: formazione, competenze e carriera di una figura professionale tra Cinque e Seicento
2015
During the Sixteenth century and the first half of the following one, Sicily played a key role in the strategy of defense of the Spanish Empire from the looming Turkish threat, being an island considered as a baluarte against the Turks. Yet despite this absolute centrality in the military policy of the Spanish monarchy, till now historical research has preferred to provide broader spectrum interpretations at the expense of in-depth studies on individual technicians or overall pictures about the figure of the military engineer. We will present a synoptic view attesting the time period of activity covered by each military technician working for the kingdom of Sicily, within a wider study conc…
French engineering graduates in corporate R&D: is it worthwhile?
2009
09054; In the early 1990s, several studies pointed out a significant gap in earnings between engineers in private firms working in Research and Development (R&D) and those in other activities. The purpose of this article is to assess, from conventional Mincerian models, to what extent these findings are still valid. The different levels of responsibility and job satisfaction of engineers in both types of activities are also analysed. The results clearly suggest a lower remuneration for engineers working in R&D in comparison to other activities, all things being equal. On the other hand, engineers involved in R&D activities have a greater dissatisfaction about the remuneration they receive, …
French Engineering Graduates in Corporate R & D : Is it worthwhile ?
2008
08010 - 14 p.; At the beginning of the 1990s, Beltramo, Bourdon and Paul presented a report for the French Commissariat au Plan on the prospect for the labour market for scientists, and other papers, which showed earnings differences between engineering graduates performing tasks in R&D or not (the first ones receiving 7% less than the others, other parameters taken into consideration). The objective of this paper is to assess to what extent, 15 years later, these results, which indicated lower earnings for researchers, is still valid. The data used in this study is similar to that in our former work. The data is generated from the survey launched each year (each two years until 2002) by th…
Analysing tasks for the Flipped Classroom from the perspective of Realistic Mathematical Education
2018
International audience; The advent of Flipped Classroom as a framework for organizing the teaching and learning of mathematics has the potential to revitalize the attention to tasks as a vehicle for meaningful learning in tertiary education. Flipped Classroom is based on the idea of student active learning under close guidance of the university teacher. Due to the possibility to engage the students in meaningful discovery of how mathematics can relate to real-life situations during in-class sessions, the tasks are seen to have a central role in a successful implementation of Flipped Classrooms. This paper explores the realistic mathematics education (RME) as a theoretical framework for task…
Michelangelo Blasco versus Ferdinando Fuga: una nuova attribuzione per il ponte sul Milicia in Sicilia
2015
The finding at the National Library of Spain of an eighteenth-century engraving of the bridge over the river Milicia, along the coast to the east of Palermo, is a chance not only to shed light on the complex history of the design and construction of one of the main Sicilian bridges, but also to attribute the real paternity rather than to the famous architect Ferdinando Fuga to the lesser-known military engineer, serving the Austrian Crown, Michelangelo Blasco, whose long and successful career is reconstructed: from Sicily, through Milan, Wien and Lisbon, to the uncharted territory of Brazil.
Religiosi e “geometrie dell’impero”. Teorie e pratiche fortificatorie tra Mediterraneo e Atlantico
2018
Between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the changes in the military technology - mainly related to the spread of firearms - implied a re-elaboration of the fortification construction theories and, consequently, a practical experimentation aimed at the identification of architectural models capable to make the border areas safe and impregnable. Far from involving only a small circle of "men of arms", the debate about the “new art of the war” involved men whose formation can not be traced back to a specific type. Clearly emerges a fact: the involvement of ecclesiastics also as "technicians" for the design of defensive structures, was not a marginal phenome…
First-year university students making sense of symbols in integration
2020
International audience; This paper focuses on first year university engineering students and their sensemaking of integration and its symbolism. Through a semiotic approach, attention is given to two students and their attempt to verbally express their reflections on integration and the related meaning of symbols. Findings suggest that students tend to interpret the symbols mainly as operations, in terms of calculations to be carried out. They express uncertainty concerning what the symbols stand for, and the mathematical objects they represent. For example, the symbols ∫ and are respectively conceived of as “finding the integral with respect to x” and students are unclear on how Riemann su…
La stereotomia nella cattedra di Architettura statica di Carlo Giachery
2014
La scuola di architettura di Palermo, sin dalla sua fondazione nel 1779, con la creazione della cattedra di Architettura civile affidata a Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia, era divenuta inevitabilmente il luogo di verifica e talvolta di esplorazione dei temi legati alla pratica professionale e, quindi, all’arte del costruire. Giachery, Professore di Architettura statica e civile dal 1837 al 1865, è il primo ad avvertire, da docente, la crisi profonda del sistema didattico della scuola di architettura di Palermo isterilita dalla ricerca di astratte idealità neoclassiche e straniatasi dal processo evolutivo della cultura architettonica europea dopo la morte dei “maestri” Marviglia e Gentile. Secon…
“Making connections” in the mathematics courses for engineers: the example of online resources for trigonometry
2018
International audience; This paper concerns the teaching of mathematics for future engineers, focusing on the theme of trigonometry. We claim that the use of trigonometry in engineering courses requires different kinds of connections: connecting different domains, different concepts, frames and registers. We use here the concept of connectivity, developed in the frame of e-textbooks analysis, to analyse online courses for future engineers in France. We evidence that these courses propose some connections; but their connectivity is not developed enough to meet the requirements of engineering courses.
Task design for Engineering Mathematics: process, principles and products
2018
International audience; We present and analyse principles and process employed at the Danish Technical University to use authentic problems from engineering (APE) in a first year mathematics course, along with some of the products (actual student assignments).